IATA confident with vMCO replacement

Facing challenges for vMPD sunset

July EMD global penetration at 42%

Similar to the deadlines imposed for the 100% Electronic Ticket project, the IATA Board established an industry target to complete implementation of Electronic Miscellaneous Documents (EMDs) in the IATA Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) by end of 2013

On 1st January 2014, IATA BSPs will only accept EMDs and will stop processing virtual Miscellaneous Change Order (vMCOs) and virtual Multipurpose Documents (vMPDs) for collecting miscellaneous transactions.

The latest BSP statistic is showing great progress on the EMD penetration worldwide. One of the contributing factors is the rapid replacement of vMCO documents by EMD-S. Especially in Europe, where most of vMCO documents are issued, the EMD penetration has reached 61% with some large markets above 80% such as Germany, France and Spain. IATA is confident that by the end of 2013 the large majority of global vMCOs should be replaced by EMD in BSPs.

On the other hand, due to certain regional constraints taking place in Latin America and South Asia, the global vMPD sunset is falling behind. The IATA e-Services team has communicated such risk to concerned stakeholders. To avoid a potential loss of airline revenues, the Simplify the Business Steering Group is evaluating various options moving forward. By the beginning of November, the StB Steering Group will have reviewed concrete recommendations and IATA will be in a position to formally announce the vMPD sunset decision to the industry.

Industry EMD deployment has been gradually ramping-up with almost 100 airlines having implemented an EMD server in production: today almost 1.5 million EMDs are accounted in 56 BSPs. By the end of the year IATA expects 120 airlines having implemented EMD with half of those reporting them through the BSPs.